Robert Stacy McCain responds to my post on frontloading the next GOP presidential candidate's complaints about media bias and writes, "What bothers me is how Ed -- and I think most Republicans -- take hostile media as a given":

This is defeatism, and I don't like it. Go back to Rep. Smith's math: If media bias influenced 4% of voters, that made all the difference.

To my mind, what this says is that if Republicans could get slightly more favorable press coverage -- say, reducing the media's pro-Democrat bias from 70/30 to 60/40 -- this improvement could make the difference between defeat and victory. Ergo, an effective public-relations program doesn't have to be 100% successful in order to make a decisive difference.